


All I Need

by Syah



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, Rated Explicit for future moments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-07 21:20:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11632134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syah/pseuds/Syah
Summary: Peter is about to graduate from Midtown and now believes he is ready to take on the mantle of an official Avenger member. Fully ready for great responsibility and sacrifices. And his girlfriend Michelle? Well, she has her own dreams, as he is well aware. It looks as if they are heading in different life directions. A little mistake on their part changes that. Be it a blessing or a curse they are in this mess together as equals.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Wait, you are saying. Didn't I see this story up earlier under a different title and on a different account? Well, yeah. I deleted it and my original account. To keep the answer as to why fairly short, well I was ready to "check out" of life if you get my drift and was thinking a lot of crazy, self-deprecating thoughts. I wanted to expunge every memory of myself from the interwebs. Obviously I didn't go through with anything, so here I am back again with my tail between my legs. Still depressed, still sluggish but I'm attempting to get better. This project is still ongoing as long as there is air in my lungs. So, yeah. Sorry about that, people.

Friendly neighborhood Spiderman.

 

When Stark said it the first time, it sounded almost like an insult. Like some parent patronizing their annoying toddler, telling them to get lost and stop wearing a waste bin as a hat.

 

Now, it was his entire identity. He had remained faithful to it since the day he turned down his place in the Avengers’ complex. It wasn’t so bad, being low-key a big deal. The local news was enough to keep his ego well-fed, which was arguably what every hero needed every now and then to keep trucking. Secret identities are hard. And since turning down Stark, Peter had been hearing from him less and less. But Peter still needed all of the encouragement he could get his hands on. He was still a kid in many ways.

 

They still kept in touch, of course. And even though Mr. Stark had told him __“Last chance, yes or no”,__ his understanding was that the offer was still open for the future. It was his senior year of high school, and becoming an Avenger was a real possibility. He would need a job anyway, right? It might as well fall in line with what he had been doing this entire time. Balancing math class and heroic antics had been difficult enough. He could __not__  imagine college, or a miserable 9-5 while pulling off show-stopping stunts every night.

 

Moving into the Avengers’ complex, of course, did come with its own pitfalls. He would be moving away from Aunt May. Which, of course he was going to have to do eventually. It just seemed like such a drastic step, going from seeing her __every__  day to seeing her maybe a few times a year around the holidays - if the bad guys did not choose the holidays to try and blow up buildings, of course. And if he joined the team, it was very likely he was never going to see Ned or Michelle again.

 

Ned was the best friend Peter could have thought to ask for. He had been keeping the Spiderman secret close all of these years. He hadn’t even brought it up in a few months – which possibly had to do with the fact that he was stressed out over exams, something Peter also recognized he should be stressed about, he just didn’t have it in him to care. Exams didn’t seem like a big deal, even if they were the last ones he would ever take before he graduated.

 

Peter didn’t really sweat stuff like that anymore. Aunt May called it his __hamartia__. His tragic flaw.

 

He wasn’t sure when she had picked up that concept and run with it, but she had not put it down since the initial discovery. When she had first walked in on him and seen him in full costume, he only remembered thinking something along the lines of – __“Oh shit. Oh shit. Fucking shit. Here we go.”__  It had to be the beginning of the end. All he could think about was the thousand and one ways he would have to defend his position. How he would have to spend countless hours convincing her that yes, technically, he was putting himself in unfathomable amounts of danger every day. But it was __totally cool__ because he had taser webs. Oh, and the Stark internship? That was just him riding around in a limo with a billionaire who was also the coolest asshole he would ever meet.

 

He didn’t really get to explain any of it. Not even the taser webs. Maybe that was for the best.

 

But she had come around. It had taken her some time – months, actually, before she stopped passive-aggressively vacuuming the apartment at 9am on Saturdays – but she had come around to the conclusion that it was his choice, and his life. She could tell how important Spiderman was to him, and how much Spiderman was __needed__ , but she did not like it. And she had made that clear every day of his life since then.

 

It was either that, or how much she did not like the idea of him becoming an Avenger. He had brought it up __once__  and she lost her shit all over again. It wasn’t just that it was dangerous. In her mind, the Avengers were some sort of cult comprised of war criminals and faceless assassins (not that she was wrong about that, either). She was convinced that he was going to end up killed or sealed in a government facility.

 

“And you need to tell Michelle,” she kept saying. “It isn’t fair to her.”

 

And she was right. It wasn’t fair. Michelle – MJ – deserved to know. But Peter could not bring himself to choke out the truth. He wasn’t worried about Ned or Aunt May letting the cat out of the bag – Ned wasn’t good at talking to girls, period, and MJ wasn’t the warm, fuzzy type to put off vibes of approachability. He also respected Peter’s privacy even though, like May, he was starting to guilt Peter into telling his girlfriend.

 

But there was no good time to just sort of spring that shit on someone. Ned and Aunt May had discovered the secret by accident (and through carelessness on Peter’s part, he could admit that). But how was he supposed to sit down and tell his girlfriend of only a year and a half that he was the guy in red spandex on the news? That wasn’t the sort of note you flicked onto someone’s desk, and there was no natural way for that to appear in conversation on a date. __Speaking of nothing we were actually talking about – you know Spiderman? Yeah, cool guy. So, I’m actually him. I mean he’s actually me. I can stop a bus with my bare hands. Do you want to go get Cold Stone?__

 

Besides, Peter was half convinced that MJ already __knew.__  She had a talent for that – knowing things. She had always been a mystery him from the day they first met. She always appeared to be distant, daydreaming, but eerily alert as well. Her eyes missed nothing, darting quickly from one action to the other when there was more than one thing happening around her. She drew what she saw. She was good at reading people, their emotions – she pulled the thoughts from their heads on a string and put them into little bubbles in her impromptu strip comics.

 

As much as he would have liked to be able to say he __knew__  her, she was as much a stranger to him, sometimes, as she could be to the countless blank faces that walked in and out of her life. He knew that she was talented and imaginative, and he loved both of those things about her.

 

Sometimes it wasn’t just her odd little drawings or her unfathomable looks. MJ was good at dropping cryptic comments that left his head reeling with implications. She was just as good at letting them roll off and moving on to the next subject without a second thought. She always seemed amused, as if there was a joke that only she was in on. Maybe one day, she would tell him the punchline.

 

For now, it was a toss-up. If she didn’t know, he had no idea how he was going to tell her. If she __did__  know, she was not going to tell anyone else. She respected and loved him as much as the other two people in his life who knew. Peter wasn’t afraid of her trying to reveal his identity to anyone.

 

Of course, that thought just brought him full-circle back to the idea of moving in with the Avengers and becoming part of their team. He didn’t even know if it would be possible to juggle __that__  life __and__  continue to be the boyfriend that MJ deserved. With graduation inching closer, the likelihood that he was going to join the team – despite every one of Aunt May’s protests – was getting stronger and stronger. But for obvious reasons, he had not even approached the subject with his girlfriend.

 

“I think you are making this harder than it has to be,” Ned said, a statement which seemed to have become his catchphrase in recent years. “First, you tell her. __Hey MJ. I’m Spiderman.__  And then if she sticks around after that – she loves you, all right, you can’t argue with that. And so if she’s still around after realizing you had been lying to her for a year and a half...”

 

“Thanks,” Peter slammed his locker shut. “Thank you, for that.”

 

“ _ _…Then,__ ” Ned continued as if he had never been interrupted, “she moves Upstate with you and attends a college close to wherever you will be __‘working at the Stark Industries Job’.__ ” He moved his fingers in exaggerated air quotation marks. “And there you go, that solves all of your problems.”

 

“Right. Except it doesn’t work that way at all, Ned.” Peter swung his backpack over his shoulder, trying not to sound too exasperated. “Do you have any idea of the verbal bitch-slapping that would come my way if I even suggested that my dreams were more important than hers? If I even dropped a single __hint__  that she should rearrange __her__  life for __me?”__

 

“Normally I would be on her side,” Ned replied. “But come on, man, you’re a __hero.__  You’re Spiderman! She can’t argue that this is different!”

 

It __was__  different. That was the rub of the entire thing. If the comic books were anything to go by, then superheroes didn’t do so well holding down relationships. It was going to be hard enough operating with a long-distance relationship in separate states, if it came down to that. But the bad guys weren’t going to stop chasing him, ever. And every time he stepped on a big bad toe, there was always a chance that the hammer would come down _ _hard__  on those he loved. He already felt like Aunt May was at risk every day, but to put MJ in the same situation?

 

Aunt May didn’t really have a choice in this whole situation. She was all Peter had. She was stuck with him, she was blood. What he had with MJ was different. MJ could choose to be with someone else, someone __better.__  

 

It was only high school after all, and she could move on pretty quickly. There was no way that she was going to let herself be miserable if…

 

__If…_ _

 

Ned pushed the school doors open and Peter stepped out into the sun. Not much longer until graduation. He was so ready to get the ringing of dismissal bells out of his head.

 

He took a deep breath. “I think MJ and I need to take a break.” He said.

 

He spoke so quietly that he could barely hear himself. Ned didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to.

 

If Peter had been thinking about it long and hard enough to actually say those words, then it was going to happen.

 

It had to happen. He would never forgive himself if she got hurt.

 

At least, that was the line of logic he had firmly convinced himself he was following.

 

 

*-*-*-*

“Peter, Michelle is at the door.” Aunt May said as she all but jumped across the narrow hallway, going from her bedroom to the bathroom. She had a towel wrapped around her head, out of the shower but not actually ready to seize the day. It was still early, though, not even afternoon yet. Peter couldn’t blame her.

 

“Thanks, May,” he already had his hand wrapped around the doorknob. He peered through the peephole, his breath catching in his chest when he caught sight of MJ. Maybe he could pretend he wasn’t home. He hadn’t spoken to her much in the past few days. That was fine, of course, she gave him space when he needed it. She wasn’t really the type to cling, even if she did expect a certain, not unreasonable amount of attention.

 

He was just being a coward. He could do this. Besides, if he ignored her that would immediately look suspicious. She came over every Saturday, and he knew that, so he would be home to receive her. It wasn’t like he was going to show up on __her__  doorstep. He might have been able to stop a bus, there would be __no__  stopping Mr. Jones if he came home and discovered Peter in his house alone with his daughter.

 

He opened the door and she stepped in. She was still wearing her pajama pants and a pair of worn sneakers that looked just a little too big for her feet. Her baggy hoodie covered up the tank top underneath, revealed only by the fact that her bag was slipping down her shoulder and dragging the hoodie with it, exposing the strap.

 

“Hey, Peter.” She dropped her bag by the coffee table and landed on the couch. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand and looked at him, blinking a few times as if she still wasn’t fully awake.

 

Peter forced the best smile he could manage onto his face and sat down beside her, trying to keep a little bit of distance between them just in case she decided to punch him once he had said his piece.

 

“Hey, MJ…” he said, hoping the use of her preferred moniker would soften her up a bit. “It’s um, good to see you.”

 

She just stared back at him, pulling her feet up onto the couch and wrapping her arms around her knees. Her eyes were owlish, staring at him with calculating coolness.

 

Was it just him, or was she acting a bit off? That was probably his own nerves talking. Peter took another deep breath – he had lost count of how many he had taken, but it probably looked like he was close to hyperventilating.

 

“So, I was thinking…” he ran a hand through his brown hair, unsure of how to even bring this up without sounding like a complete asshole. “I was just thinking that um, you know. With graduation coming up, and there is so much strain on both of us. It really isn’t fair to expect us to, you know, have so much we need from each other when we are both so – strung out and unsure of things and stuff.”

 

He sounded worse than an asshole. He sounded like a straight-up idiot. MJ wasn’t buying it either. She was just looking at him as if he was a boring infomercial. But he wanted to get his entire piece out before she could form her counter-argument and talk him out of the decision that it had taken him days to make.

 

“All I’m saying,” he said, “is that I want some time. I just need some time to be me, to think about what I really want to do with my life…and I think that you have got a lot coming up too – decisions that are giant like…what school you are going to go to, what state you want to end up in and – it’s a lot of pressure, and I don’t want to be the guy who keeps you from achieving your dreams because I don’t want to you know, have a huge influence over your decision or something like that. All I’m really saying is that I want you to be happy and I think we should just take a break.”

 

No reaction. His chest was starting to hurt.

 

“A break, you know? Like we stop dating for a while. __Not for good,__ ” he rushed to put as much emphasis on possible on __that.__  “I don’t want us to stop dating __period.__  It’s just – well, think about it! I’ve got the Stark Industries Job after graduation, which means I’m going to be moving upstate…and it’s just going to be really hard, you know, to try and keep things as good as they are from a long distance. I know I sound really pathetic and you probably hate me right now but I’ve fucked things up before and I’m just really trying to do the right thing. It’s for your own good, it really is – you will be safer…it’s just, trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing. Or I don’t, really, but I’m trying to make a very good guess. And I realize that you probably think I’m an enormous jerk right now but I care about you a __lot.__  And instead of disappearing like I usually do I just wanted to let you know that we are on the same page…I’m thinking about you every step of the way through this. I just think that we could use a bit of a temporary reprieve and then we could, you know…revisit….the subject.”

 

The last of his words died on his tongue. He sounded so __lame.__  

 

 _ _Safer?!__  Why had he said something like __that?__

 

She narrowed her eyes and tilted her chin up. She was so proud, so aloof. He didn’t know what he expected. He was just waiting on the verbal barrage.  

 

“So, that’s it then?” Her scornful rebuke was much more scathing than he could have imagined. “You put __that__  before me?”

 

It didn’t seem like she was just talking about the Stark Industries Job. It was something else. He got that feeling again, like she __knew,__  but he wasn’t going to say it out loud. If there hadn’t been a good time to bring up Spiderman before, now was really __not__  the best time.

 

“And for __my__  own well-being, right?” She continued. “Because I’m a little flower who needs to be protected and sheltered, who isn’t entitled to make her own decisions over what she wants?”

 

He could see where this was going. It was like a train-wreck, and he was bolted down to the tracks with no way to avoid ending up a bloody mess.

 

“Michelle,” he started. “It isn’t like that. It really isn’t, look, if we could just…”

 

She didn’t let him finish. She stood up, her legs slipping over the side of the couch as she bent to reach out and grab her bag, swinging it up over her shoulder, nearly knocking him in the head.

 

“Don’t even bother,” she said, standing up. “There is no good reason for you to do this. You aren’t protecting me, you’re just protecting your own interests. Well, that’s fine. I don’t need __your__  permission to live __my life.__  You act like I never once thought about what would happen after graduation – but as usual, you’re only concerned about your end of the line.” She scoffed, shoving a wavy strand of dark hair out of her eyes. She wasn’t even looking at him anymore. “Like I said, don’t worry about it. I will see you around, __Parker.”__

 

The way she said his name made him want to die. She stomped her feet against the floor so hard that the shit piled on top of the TV rattled. She made her way out of the door and slammed it behind her. Peter followed her trail, but he didn’t try to stop her. He knew that he was going to be able to.

 

Peter placed his hand on the door and leaned against it, pressing his forehead to the smooth finish and closing his eyes. He wanted to slam his head against the wood until he knocked some sense into himself. How could he be such a selfish idiot?

 

He should have known she was going to take this personally. He had hoped against hope that it would go better. But it really was for her own safety. She had no idea what she was signing up for…

 

Or maybe she did. Because she knew things. And maybe he really was just hopeless.

 

*-*-*-*

She was avoiding him, and she wasn’t even trying to be subtle about it.  

 

She ignored him when he called out to her in the hallway. He had stopped doing __that__  after the first day, because he hated how pathetic it made him feel. She would not even look his way during Decathlon meetings. She had avoided him before during fights, but never to this degree. It was really starting to get to him.

 

Weeks had gone by. The school year was wrapping up with graduation creeping closer and closer. He decided that he was going to go insane if MJ didn’t speak to him. He didn’t know __what__  he was going to do, but he had to convince her that he was not really that much of a jerk. He didn’t know how he was going to do that when she was so successfully ignoring the fact that he existed, but he was going to have to find a way.

 

He racked his brain every day for what he might say to get her to accept his apology. Nothing came to his brain that wasn’t directly related to the whole Superhero thing. And if telling her before had ever been an option, there was no way he was going to bring himself to do it __now.__  He remembered that narrow look she had given him on the couch right as he ended his bumbling rant. He did not want to see that particular quiet fury in her dark eyes ever again. It was like she had a storm brewing inside of her, and one wrong move from him would have unleashed its full fury in ways he would never survive.

 

 _ _Maybe it isn’t worth it.__  For the first time in what felt like forever, he was starting to question whether or not joining the Avengers was the best plan. Funny, how all of the perfectly reasonable arguments from before – such as certain danger and endless ways to die – had not been enough to make him think twice. But Michelle Jones giving him the cold shoulder was enough to spur him in the direction of ‘ _ _maybe I should consider something else__ _ _’ thinking__ _ _.__

 

What else was there for him? That was just it. There was nothing else. He had to be a part of something greater. He just __had__  to. He could not be Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman forever. Crimestopper by night, miserable tax accountant by day.

 

That was not going to be his life. He had dreams. MJ had dreams too, and he was never going to expect her to give up on those. There had to be some way he could at least __apologize.__  He had to make some form of amends. Even if she did not want to get back together with him, even if she had already decided that she could never love him in the same way again ever…he had to at least be able to __speak__  to her again. He needed to be her friend, he could not live without her in his life.

 

That realization alone was enough to terrify him. He had not realized before exactly how much he needed her. But once he admitted it to himself, he knew there was no going back. There was no walking away at the end of graduation and pretending that none of this ever happened or meant anything.

 

“Maybe you should just be honest,” Ned was getting tired of hearing this whole spiel. Peter could not admit that maybe MJ was all he ever thought about anymore, much less spoke about.

 

“Maybe,” he stared glumly at the puddle underneath his shoes. It had just stopped raining earlier, but he could have sworn he felt another drop on the back of his neck.

 

“Even if you think she already knows, you should still say it.” Ned told him. “But I mean, that’s just my two cents man. You know how I feel. It was the best thing that ever happened to me at the time, to know I had Spiderman as my best friend. And I think it will be the best thing ever for her too. Keeping secrets isn’t great material to build your life on, you know.”

 

“Sure, yeah,” Peter nodded, admitting somewhat bitterly. “I know.”


	2. Chapter 2

Peter's mind was whirring. What if keeping secrets was the only safe thing to do? This is what he asked himself over and over again. What if that was the only way he could make certain that whatever relationship he had with MJ in the future, she would not be put in any mortal danger? He did not want to even think about the day when he would have to swoop in and save her – being a hero was the best thing that he could ever think to do with his life, so long as he wasn’t plucking someone he cared so deeply for from the jaws of death.

 

He remembered what it had been like when he stopped that ATM robbery and the sandwich place across the street had gotten destroyed. He had never felt his heart plunge so quickly into his stomach. He felt like his insides were being eaten up by acid. It hadn’t been his fault. But at the same time, it  _ _had__  been. If he hadn’t been so focused on stopping that stupid robbery, on being the hero…

 

Why did he care about the ATM anyway? Big banks were like…the enemy of America, or something else that sounded like what his Civics professor would say. In trying to accomplish what he thought was a good deed at the time, he ended up having one of his favorite spots demolished. And  _ _that__  hadn’t even been someone he was attached to.

 

On one hand, it was like his aunt kept trying to tell him for so long after she found out. It was just a sandwich shop. Best sandwiches in Queens, but still.

 

On the other hand, the guilt had nearly eaten him alive for months after that incident. He couldn’t fathom how it would feel to be an Avenger, to destroy entire skyscrapers and have dozens, hundreds of civilian casualties in the span of a year. How did Captain America sleep with that knowledge resting on his shoulders? How did Iron Man?

 

Maybe that was why Mr. Stark always look so tired, like he was carrying the weight of the world on his armored shoulders. Peter doubted he would ever have the balls to really ask.

 

He was probably overthinking. He was probably being overdramatic. Thank goodness he had Ned there to be something of a voice of reason. Holy fuck, Peter never thought he would be thinking  _ _that.__  

 

*-*-*-*

It was a quiet night. Quiet nights were becoming more and more common. Maybe this  _ _Superhero__  thing was working out. Or maybe all of the criminals were getting smart and were doing their crime-ing during the hours when they knew Spiderman would be in class.

 

Peter’s feet dangled from the edge of a building. He had his palms pressed into the concrete, swinging his feet like a child as he looked down at the street. A bunch of civilians were walking up and down the street, most in a hurry to get home before it got any later. He was used to being out past ten, but some of these people were acting like they had never seen dark before. Maybe part of his friendly neighborhood spidey duties could include escorting old ladies back to their house before the sun had completely set.

 

Mr. Stark would really love that. Maybe it was just the push he would need to get him a seat at the Avengers table. He almost laughed at his own absurd vision, but he didn’t really feel much like laughing.

 

He was still thinking about MJ. He was tempted to check his phone again, but Karen would probably comment on exactly how pathetic he was acting. He had only checked it every .03 seconds or so since he left the house. His battery had been on 100% and now it was down to 63% in under an hour with how much he had been switching it on and off just trying to see if MJ had thought to shoot him a word. Clearly, he wasn’t going to get anywhere like this. He had to face the facts and let himself accept the truth. She had ditched him for good. That had to be it. He probably deserve it, though, he had been a massive jerk…

 

Ned probably would have agreed. Moments like this were what made him glad that Spiderman worked alone for the most part. He didn’t need a sidekick to sit there and talk to him about all of the bad decisions he was making in his life. Mr. Stark and Karen were good enough at that on their own.

 

Still. He was bored. His mind was going to keep wandering as long as he didn’t have something to occupy it. Peter glanced down the street again, watching the oncoming cars, the bright blurred city lights that made him feel like he was in the middle of a migraine…

 

The noises. The traffic. The buzzing neon signs and the indistinct garble of low nighttime chatter. He was going to go crazy if he sat here by himself a minute longer thinking of MJ. He was going to go  _ _absolutely crazy.__

 

He had to do something else. Swing. Maybe he could just swing for a while.

 

He let himself slide off the building and shot a web at the nearest lamppost. He swung from the height, sweeping down and whooping as he did so. He already felt a little better from the exhilaration of the adrenaline rush. This was probably what he needed.

 

Peter continued to swing, the city vanishing behind him as he went from one lamppost to the next, blind to the sounds of the world blurring around him. He found himself in front of a familiar place, and he didn’t know why he stopped at MJ’s bedroom window. He was a masochist, he supposed.

 

Her bedroom door was open. He found his hands on the sill, pulling himself up so that he was crouched in the open space. He ducked his head a little bit so that he could see into the bedroom.

 

__This is creepy. This is really creepy.__ It was creepy. He shouldn’t be doing this. She was probably going to turn around and tell him exactly how weird he was being.

 

She was stretched out on her stomach on top of her bed. Reading, as usual, her hair pulled back and her book propped up on a pillow. She was completely engrossed. At least, that was what it looked like. But it still felt like her gaze was still following him from the corner of her eyes, tracing every step as he jumped from the sill and landed gracefully in her bedroom.

 

His feet hit the floor with a dull  _ _thud.__  If she didn’t know he was there at first, then she absolutely knew he was there now. He winced a bit, glad she couldn’t see his expression underneath the mask. He held his hands up in a gesture that sort of said  _ _‘ta da!’__

 

She didn’t do anything at first. A long moment of silence passed between them. She finally turned so that she was twisted around and resting on her side, propped up on her elbow. She didn’t burst into giggles. She didn’t do any of that obnoxious fangirling. There was no screaming, no shouting the obvious.  _ _“SPIDER MAN!__ ” He didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted.

 

He settled on _ _‘probably relieved’__.

 

She just inclined her head. Her expression didn’t even change. “Spiderman.”

 

Peter hesitated. What was he doing?

 

He still asked himself that even as he gripped his mask and pull it off, balling it up in his hands and squeezing.

 

“You knew,” he said quietly, feeling like his voice was stuck in his throat. “Didn’t you?”

 

She didn’t answer. She was so quiet he could hear cicadas screaming outside of the window.

 

“How long?” He asked, desperate for something other than the sound of his own voice.

 

“Longer than you think.” She said that so casually.

 

He swore under his breath. He wasn’t angry with her. He was angry at his own hopeless goddamn stupidity.

 

“I’m sorry,” he felt the words gush out of his mouth like omit. “I’m sorry that I fucked it up. I wish – well I have been wishing – that you would understand. I love you, MJ…I love you so much, even if you hate my guts by now. Probably…” his voice trailed off and he felt meek, stupid. So stupid.

 

She didn’t say anything for a few more of the longest seconds of his life. She sat up and pulled her long legs over the side of the bed. She sat there with her hands resting on her knees as she regarded him with those half-lidded, eternally sleepy-looking eyes.

 

“So – it took you breaking up with me to finally be honest? Wow. You really are a loser.”

 

He wanted to be annoyed. He wanted to correct her, but he couldn’t spit out the right amount of jumbled words. He hadn’t wanted to break up with her, not  _ _really.__ But then again, pushing out the words wouldn’t matter, because even if he managed to do so; it was very rare to win an argument with MJ. He wouldn’t be the first to try, and he wouldn’t be the last to lose.

 

He settled on an imploring look that made him feel like even more of a piece of chewed up bubblegum. “I guess so.”

 

She let him stew in that for another moment. When she finally spoke again, her voice was a little softer than usual. She was looking at him, technically, but he felt like her brown eyes were looking right through him at the same time. Like her head wasn’t really all there.

 

“I want you to be an Avenger, Parker.” She said. “I want you to be the best damn Spiderman you can be. I want you to stick it to everyone – particularly Tony Stark. Fight hard for the little guy like you’ve always done. Stay true to yourself that way.” She paused, biting the corner of her lip. “I don’t want to stand in front of your dreams. I know you wouldn’t stand in front of mine. And I respect you for that. Well,” she rubbed the back of her neck, seeming a bit uncertain for the first time since he had ever met her. “I guess I know your secret. So if I tell you one, do you promise you won’t change your mind about being an Avenger, or being Spiderman? I mean, I had that whole thing just now. So you can’t really.” She tride to tease him, but she was being so serious for the first time that it fell sort of flat.

 

“I promise,” he said, all too eager to prove himself to be everything he said he wanted to be.

  
She nodded. “Remember,” she said. “You promise. And even you won’t break a promise.” There was warning in his voice. Peter was getting nervous, now. But he nodded, bracing himself for the impact of he wasn’t sure what.”

 

MJ inhaled sharply, her chest heaving with a deep breath and she let out a hard breath. She looked at  _ _him,__  now, the full of her sharp gaze burning right through his. “I’m pregnant.”

 

He stared. He knew that was rude, that it was…weird. But he was just staring at her. He felt like he was rooted to the floor, like he had stepped in wet cement and now it was sucking at his shoes, refusing to let him go. He kept trying to find the words, but all he could manage was for his quivering lips to push out the words… “How?”

 

“How?” Michelle’s shoulders fell, and she gave him that sarcastic look, the one that seemed to be her signature unimpressed glare. “How? Well, Parker. I know we took sex ed together, but allow me to give you a refresher course…”

 

“I know how it  _ _happens!__ ” he raked a hand through his thick hair, clenching it by the roots. He felt like he was going to rip it right off his scalp. “Oh my god, MJ…oh my god…” he couldn’t seem to manage anything else. He started pacing back and forth, his chest tight, his throat burned. Was he about to cry?  _ _Fuck. No. No crying. Not in front of MJ. Are you sad? No, not sad, but probably scared. Really fucking scared. Terrified…__

 

“We can’t do this….” His voice was climbing.

 

“What do you mean we can’t?” she demanded. He just kept shaking his head.

 

“We can’t do this!” His voice was escalating. He was shouting. He knew he was going to wake someone up if he didn’t pipe down. And it wasn’t like he didn’t care. But he also couldn’t help himself. “We are so young, MJ! How are we going to do it? Do you know – do you know what Aunt May is going to  _ _do to me?__  Do you know the rate that young parents have to drop out of school? Do you know what this is going to do to….oh my god, MJ –  _ _YOUR DAD. Your dad is going to kill me. YOU SHOULD BE TRYING TO KILL ME AT THIS MOMENT.”__

 

He was panting. His voice was breaking from the fact that his throat was so dry. Why wasn’t she talking? He just realized that she had not said a word to interrupt his tirade. That was – pretty unusual. MJ really liked interrupting him.

 

He stepped a bit closer. His eyes were searching for hers and he had his hand out to her, wanting to pull her into his arms. She didn’t acknowledge the hand. Her eyes were bright with tears. She had been crying, but she hadn’t made a sound during the whole thing. She was doing her best not to break out into sobs. Her shoulders trembling with the exertion of holding back such a heavy emotional burden.

 

Peter felt his heart drop. He had never felt so guilty. Not even after the shop had been demolished. Not even after Aunt May guilt-tripped him for what felt like a thousand days after she had discovered he had been lying to her for so long.

 

There MJ was. She was this girl he loved so much, and she was so beautiful. She wasn’t even in her pajamas. She was still dressed like she would be for their graduation, in that dress she had asked his opinion on once. She finally looked up at him, and her stare was so utterly lost. She seemed so…fragile. So close to the precipice of being broken. Her hand was resting gingerly on top of her stomach, and just the sight of her doing that brought everything slamming into his chest.

 

He closed the distance between them quickly, planting himself in front of her. He crashed to his knees with enough force to probably rattle the teeth in his head. There were tears running down his face, mostly silent, and he hadn’t even been aware that he was shedding them.

 

What were they going to do? They were just two kids themselves...


End file.
